“Johnny Depp Got Used, Manipulated, And Made To Look Like An A-Hole” – Doug Stanhope

Comedian, Doug Stanhope, a close pal of Johnny Depp has come to his friend’s defense stating that Heard was “threatening to lie about Depp publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms”.

He said, “Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole. And he saw it coming and didn’t or couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Amber Heard applied for a divorce from Johnny Depp, Monday, (May, 23), fifteen months after their marriage and since then it’s been a struggle for the Hollywood soon-to-be exes as she cited irreconcilable differences as her reason for wanting out and by Friday, (May, 27), Heard was granted a restraining order against Depp only after she accused him of domestic violence and being a threat to her life.

Meanwhile, Daily Mirror reports of a name-changing document which shows Amber Heard was secretly married to her former love Tasya Van Ree and following her split with Depp, she has gotten close to her ex-girlfriend again.

Amber had entered into a legally binding domestic partnership with Tasya, 40, in March 2008 in ­California and changed her name to Amber Van Ree. She used her new name for her business ventures also starting her company Under The Black Sky Inc using her “married” name.

The actress didn’t petition to divorce Tasya and only changed her name in late 2013, when she and Depp were already together and things were getting serious.
Amber Heard and Tasya Van Ree

With all the allegations and speculations on the truth between Depp and Amber, Doug Stanhope has spoken out.

And he is calling Amber a lie and a blackmailer. Read:

It’s almost 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep. Not even dozing off. Today, a friend of mine was pilloried in the press for domestic violence. Coupled with a picture of his wife with a bruise, he was murdered on social media. I watched it happen and I didn’t say a f—ing word.
Even though I knew it was bulls—.

We’d watched it build like this since before they were married. We’d watched her manipulate and f— with him for years. We didn’t say a word. To each other, yes, but never to him.

When your friend is in an awful, abusive relationship — man or woman — and you risk weighing in that their counterpart is a demon, you know the odds are they will jump right back into the fire and then dump you from their life for being honest.

Most of us have been on one or both sides of this coin. Choosing to be blinded, or removing the people who have clearer eyes that can guide you.
The fact that Hollywood and the entertainment industry at large — f—, society as a whole — turns a blind eye to domestic violence is abhorrent.

But the tides have turned in such a way that the mere allegation that such a crime has occurred leaves the person accused as guilty without due process.

My girlfriend, Bingo, and I have known Johnny Depp for a few years now. We have watched Amber Heard f— with him at his weakest — or watched him at his weakest from being f—ed with — for the entire time we’ve known him.
And we didn’t say s—. Because he’s Johnny Depp.
And we didn’t want to be thrown out of the circle for saying that The Emperor was being Stripped of His Clothes.

It isn’t my place to name people who agreed with us but I couldn’t name one person closely associated with him that didn’t feel the same. But nobody said s— to his face.

Bingo and I were at Johnny’s house for most of that Saturday until just before the alleged assault. We assumed initially that his dour mood was because of his mother’s death the day before. But he opened up in the most vulnerable of ways that it was not only his mother, but that Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms. Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it, including the manner in which he is now being vilified.

We stopped not saying s—.

Bingo and I together, and then separately, told him how much we were aware of this manipulative a–hole, how his closest circle had all agreed on this since the day we met and that we all feared that telling him outright might alienate us all.
Love makes you do funny things.

I told him the truth and I half-expected to be asked to leave. But I wasn’t seeing Johnny Depp. I saw a naked Emperor. And we told him to get dressed. Other people came in and out during the afternoon, all verifying that we’d been cowardly, saying things only behind his back for so long. He seemed dumbstruck that nobody had ever come clean about this and he thanked everyone for being honest.

He still pronounced his love for Amber but was presciently aware that she was going to pull off some kind of ruse to f— him over.
He hadn’t slept in days with anxiety. You’d call him a paranoid if you didn’t know better. But he knew better and he was right.

As he finally felt like he could sleep, we left him. From what we now read in the news, later that night the police were called to his house for a domestic dispute. Finding no criminal act had occurred and no signs of physical abuse, the police left.
Everything Johnny had told us that she’d been threatening had actually come to be. It blew up in the news, raced through the Internet like a plague and blew up on Twitter like it was the McMartin child abuse scandal. People are swarming with torches on social media.

I watched it all happen ahead of time and I watched it come to fruition today. And I haven’t been able to sleep again because I didn’t say s— to defend him. Why? Because I felt like in defending him I would just come across as a sycophant trying to attach myself to a sensationalized story in order to further my career. A latterday Kato Kaelin.

And now as the sun is coming up, I realized not saying s— to defend him is a far worse crime of ego; to leave a friend hanging so you don’t look like a suck-up. I — and the “we” that were there — aren’t suck-ups or apologists. We were witnesses.
I didn’t jump into the fray because I was weak; it was because I didn’t want to look like a name-dropper.

I’ll name-drop now. Johnny Depp is my friend.

But any one of my friends will tell you I always call them out on bulls—. Abusing women is bulls—. Johnny doesn’t abuse anyone. And he told me that day ahead of time that she’d pull some kind of s— like this.
Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole. And he saw it coming and didn’t or couldn’t do anything to stop it.

He may never talk to me again for saying it but I’d never forgive myself for not coming to his defense out of fear or ego.
I stand up for my friends and I tell the f—ing truth.

There’s nothing hidden under the sun, if Amber Heard is playing a game with Depp or taking advantage, soon it will be exposed and if the 52 year-old whose ex-wives, children and now close pal are defending is the one who is lying, we’ll still find out. It’s always just a matter of time. And we have it in abundance. Until we die anyway.